David Duke's Warning

October 25, 1991

No one should assume that Republican David Duke's second-place finish in the Louisiana gubernatorial primary last week, in which he bested an incumbent governor who had the backing of President Bush, is only of local importance.

Mr. Duke has declared that he is part of a national movement. Unless that political force is checked with a counterforce of reason, the nation may face a dangerous new round of social upheaval and racial separatism.

Mr. Duke, a former Ku Klux Klansman and neo-Nazi, is riding a current of white reaction to the drive for racial equality -- especially racial preferences and affirmative-action programs. Mr. Duke has exploited the willingness of a growing number of voters to accept as legitimate and mainstream the politics of resentment.

Although the Republican establishment decries Mr. Duke, he represents that party's two-decades-old "Southern strategy" and he is evidence of the alienation of Southern white males from the Democratic Party. Some blame the press for publicizing Mr. Duke. But the voters know what they have chosen. The press is to blame only for not shaming the voters enough.

It is true that Mr. Duke is a danger in himself. He is racism dressed up in Sunday clothes. But the trend he exploits is the greater danger -- it is racial warfare depicted as reasonableness. If Mr. Duke can succeed by moderating his white supremacist rhetoric, how much more successful could a moderate be if he heated up campaign rhetoric with racial innuendo? Lee Atwater provided the answer in 1988 with the "issue" of Willie Horton. The trend continues with the campaign against quotas and with Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, injecting race into his confirmation hearings.

The GOP -- the party of Abraham Lincoln -- has prospered for 25 years partly by dividing Americans on the basis of racial fear. It is said that Mr. Duke may run in some presidential primaries against Mr. Bush. It would serve Mr. Bush right.

But the rise of Mr. Duke, in the end, won't do the GOP or the nation as much harm as the acquiescence to odious politics for the sake of victory.

One should wonder whether victory is worthwhile when a political party wins an election but loses its soul. But the

Democrats have a problem, too. They have lost both victory and their way. They have confused civil rights with the civil-rights lobby. Because of their inability to reassess affirmative action, both in applications and assumptions, the Democrats have lost touch with the nation's generous impulse. As long as the Democrats are unable to present a unifying and just vision of civil rights to the country, there will be nothing to stop a David Duke, or a George Bush, from dividing us.